Cruise Insurance

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karobis

Guest
I have booked cruise insurance on my past Cruises and fortunately have never used.
My questions are as follows.
1). I've booked for August 2nd cruise. Best to book within the 14-21 day period of first payment (deposit)
2). I've used Travelex Plus in the past. Other recommendations?
3). Most important feature per your experience?
4) Anyone had to ever use and were you satisfied?
 
C

Cruizer

Guest
1) There are two schools of thought on this. By buying the insurance as soon as you book the trip you avoid pre-existing conditions exclusions. However, you don't need the insurance until the final payment is due. So if you don't have a pre-existing condition, then you are better off purchasing the insurance just before final payment is due. That way if you have to cancel prior to final payment, you don't loose the insurance premium.

2) I have always purchased from CSA. You can check out http://insuremytrip.com/ which allows you to compare several policies at once.

3) & 4) So far I have been lucky and I have not had to make any claims.
 
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Gayle V

Guest
One additional thing about the pre-existing condition waiver on the insurance. There have been a few times when we've booked cruises with only a "hope" of actually going on them, not being sure if it would work out in the end. For times like that I really hated to buy the insurance up front, when there was a high probability that we'd cancel long before final payment was due.

But then I didn't want to wait to buy the insurance and thus bypass the time frame for that pre-existing condition feature. I was surprised to find out that there are policys that have the pre-existing condition waiver in place if you merely purchase the insurance within 24 hours of making final payment.. Those policies cost more, but not a huge amount more.

This is good to know for those who want to wait to buy the insurance and also for anyone who just happened to forget to get the insurance immediately.

One company that does this, I found at insuremytrip, is called HTH Worldwide.
 
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Patti-Cake

Guest
We always purchase insurance the day we book the cruise. My DH has some health issues, so we definitely want to make sure we don't have the pre-existing clause affecting our insurance. We have cruised numerous times and have never used the insurance until this past December. We were supposed to be going on a New Year's Eve 5-day cruise on the Carnival Inspiration, and my DH ended up in the emergency room on December 20th with appendicitis which resulted in an open appendectomy that afternoon and a five day hospital stay. This is the first time we will be filing an insurance claim with AIG TravelGuard. We actually mailed the claim today, so I will post again after the claim is processed.

We also use insuremytrip.com and purchase a policy that doesn't have a pre-existing clause and also has good medical and medical evacuation coverage.
 
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MoJo2Rusty

Guest
I have used Travel Safe http://www.travelsafe.com/ for each of my cruises and on my 2006 cruise I had to cancel the cruise the morning we were to depart. My dad passed away that morning and I had to fly home before boarding. I contacted Travel Safe that morning while waiting for my return flight. They contacted me back the following morning. Of course I had paper work that I had to send in to them. I recommend that you keep all your CC statements handy with any payments etc, until after your cruise. You will have to send them copies of all this. I sent all the required paper work in the end of January and had a full refund on the cruise price and post night hotel within 2 weeks. They contacted me by mail at least twice with status on the claim and I also received a couple phone calls. I was quite happy with their service.
 
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GTVCRUISER

Guest
I have a question does anyone know what happens if one person has to cancel the cruise because of illness ,can the other person still go on the cruise and not have to pay single rate ? Thanks
 
C

Cruizer

Guest
If one person cancels, leaving only one in the cabin, that one is going to have to pay the supplement.
 
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MoJo2Rusty

Guest
As far as I know, my cabin mate didn't have to pay any additonal when I had to cancel, but then we had booked 3 to the cabin. I'll check to see if they had any additional charges. If there wern't it may have been due to 3 in the cabin instead of 2.
 
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Gayle V

Guest
I don't see why the cruise line should expect to collect more from the remaining person, if they get to keep the full amount from the person who canceled. Why should the one passenger's unfortunate situation be a windfall for the cruise line?

If one passenger has to cancel their cruise, and the cruise line pockets all the money, why should they get even more ? If they had to give a full or partial refund, I could see it, but not if they keep the whole fare, which they would do with a last minute cancelation. That makes no sense to me.
 
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